Stop it, he told himself. Thinking like a failure. Too damn sorry for yourself. Get yourself out of this. Still got your teeth and your nails… and your brain. Just bide your time…

"For lo," Fwi-Song warbled, "the godless ones, the most hated, the despised-by-the-despised, the Atheists, the Anathematics, have sent us this instrument of the Nothingness, the Vacuum, to us…" As the giant said those words Horza looked up and saw Fwi-Song point along the beach to the shuttle. "But we shall not waver in our faith! We shall resist the lure of the Nothingness between the stars where the godless ones, the Anathematised of the Vacuum exist! We shall stay part of what is a part of us! We shall not treat with the great Blasphemy of the Material. We shall stand as the rocks and trees stand — firm, rooted, secure, staunch, unyielding!" Fwi-Song's arms went out again, and the voice bellowed out. The gruff-voiced man with the dirty pale skin shouted something at the seated crowd, and they shouted back. The prophet smiled at Horza from across the fire. Fwi-Song's mouth was a dark hole, with four small fangs protruding when the lips formed a smile. They shone in the sunlight.

"This the way you treat all your guests?" Horza said, trying not to cough until the end of his sentence. He cleared his throat. Fwi-Song's smile vanished.

"Guest you are not, sea-wanton, salt-gift. Prize: ours to keep, mine to use. Bounty from the sea and the sun and the wind, brought to us by Fate. Hee-hee." Fwi-Song's smile returned with a girlish giggle, and one of the huge hands went to cover the pale lips, "Fate recognises its prophet, sends him tasty treats! Just when some of my flock were having second thoughts, too! Eh, Mr First?" The turret-head turned to the thin figure of the paler man, standing with arms folded, by the giant's side. Mr First nodded:

"Fate is our gardener, and our wolf. It weeds out the weak to honour the strong. So the prophet has spoken."

"And the word which dies in the mouth lives in the ear," Fwi-Song said, turning the huge head back to look at Horza. At least, Horza thought, now I know it's a male. For whatever that's worth.

"Mighty Prophet," Mr First said. Fwi-Song smiled wider but continued looking at Horza. Mr First went on, "The sea-gift should see the fate that awaits him. Perhaps the treacherous coward Twenty-seventh-"

"Oh, yes!" Fwi-Song clapped his huge hands together and a smile lit up his whole face. For a second Horza thought he saw small white eyes beyond the slits staring at him. "Oh let's, yes! Bring the coward, let us do what must be done."

Mr First spoke in ringing tones to the emaciated humans gathered around the fire. A few stood up and walked off behind Horza, towards the forest. The rest started singing and chanting.

After a few minutes Horza heard a scream, then a series of yells and screams, gradually coming closer. At last the people who had left came back, carrying a short, thick log, much like the one Horza was held by. Swinging on the pole was a young man, screaming, shouting in the language Horza didn't understand, and struggling. Horza saw drops of sweat and saliva fall from the young man's face and spot the sand. The log was sharpened at one end; that point was driven into the sand on the opposite side of the fire from Horza, so that the young man faced the Changer.

"This, my libation from the seas," Fwi-Song said to Horza, pointing at the young man, who was quivering and moaning, his eyes rolling about in their sockets and his lips dribbling, "this is my naughty boy; called Twenty-seventh, since his rebirth. This was one of our respected, much loved sons, one of our anointed, one of our fellow morsels, one of our brotherly taste buds on the great tongue of life." Fwi-Song's voice chortled with laughter as he spoke, as though he knew the absurdity of the part he was playing and couldn't resist hamming it up. "This splinter from our tree, this grain from our beach, this reprobate dared to run towards the seven-times-cursed vehicle of the Vacuum. He spurned the gift of burden with which we honoured him; he chose to abandon us and flee across the sands when the alien enemy passed over us yesterday. He did not trust our salving grace, but turned instead to an instrument of darkness and nothingness, towards the soaking shade of the soulless ones, the Anathematics." Fwi-Song looked at the man, still shaking on the post across the fire from Horza. The prophet's face went stern with reproach. "By the workings of Fate the traitor who ran from our side and put his prophet's life at risk was caught — so that he might learn his sad mistake, and make good his terrible crime." Fwi-Song's arm dropped. The vast head shook.

Mr First shouted to the people round the fire. They faced the young man called Twenty-seventh and chanted. The ghastly smells Horza had sensed earlier came back, making his eyes mist and his nose tingle.

While the people chanted and Fwi-Song watched, Mr First and two of the women followers dug up small sacks from the sand. Out of them they brought some thin lengths of cloth which they proceeded to wrap round their bodies. As Mr First put his vestments on, Horza saw a large, cumbersome-looking projectile pistol, held in a string holster beneath the man's grubby tunic. Horza presumed that was the gun fired at the shuttle the day before, when he and Mipp had overflown the island.

The young man opened his eyes, saw the three people in their cloths and started screaming.

"Hear how the stricken soul cries out for its lesson, pleads for its bounty of regret, its solace of refreshing suffering," Fwi-Song smiled, looking at Horza. "Our child Twenty-seventh knows what awaits him, and while his body, already proved so weak, breaks before the storm, his soul cries out, "Yes! Yes! Mighty Prophet! Succour me! Make me part of you! Give me your strength! Come to me!" Is it not a sweet and uplifting sound?"

Horza looked into the prophet's eyes and said nothing. The young man went on screaming and trying to tear himself away from the stump. Mr First was crouched before him, on his knees, his head bowed, muttering to himself. The two women dressed in the dull cloth were preparing bowls of steaming liquid from the vats and pots around the fire, warming some over the flames. The smells came to Horza, turning his stomach.

Fwi-Song switched to the other language and spoke to the two women. They looked at Horza, then came up to him with the bowls. Horza drew his head away as they shoved the containers under his nose. He wrinkled his face up in disgust at what looked and smelled like fish entrails in a sauce of excrement. The women took the awful stuff away; it left a stink in his nose. He tried breathing through his mouth.

The young man's mouth had been wedged open with blocks of wood, and his choking screams altered in pitch. While Mr First held him, the women ladled the liquids from the bowls into his mouth. The young man spluttered and wailed, choked and tried to spit. He moaned, then threw up.

"Let me show you my armoury, my benefaction," Fwi-Song said to Horza, and reached behind his vast body. He brought back a large bundle of rags, which he startled to unfold. Glittering in the sunlight, metal devices like tiny man-traps were revealed. Fwi-Song put one finger to his lips while he surveyed the collection, then picked up one of the small metal contraptions. He put it into his mouth, fitting both pans over the pins Horza had seen earlier. "Zhare," Fwi-Song said, raising his mouth in a broad smile towards the Changer. "What'oo you shink of zhat?" The artificial teeth sparkled in his mouth; rows of sharp, serrated points. "Or zhese?" Fwi-Song swapped them for another set, full of tiny fangs like needles, then another, with angled teeth like hooks with barbs, then another, with holes set in them. "Goo', eh?" He smiled at Horza, leaving the last pair in. He turned to Mr First. «Wha» you shink, Nishtur Shursht? Ehs? Or…" Fwi-Song took out the set with the holes, put in another set, like long, blade-like spades. "Zheze? A "ink eeg a rar ah nishe. Esh, rert ush zhtart wish eez. Ret's punish zhoze naughty tootsiesh."